Trump: Time to rally around me – or expect voter riots

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

After yet another round of convincing victories for Donald Trump, Republican leaders spent Wednesday wavering between grudging acceptance and deep denial about the businessman’s likely ascent to the GOP presidential nomination. An emboldened Trump warned that if the party tried to block him, “You’d have riots.”

With at least three more states in his win column, Trump is now the only candidate with a path to clinching the Republican nomination before the party’s convention in July. But he still must do better in upcoming contests to get the necessary 1,237 delegates, leaving some opponents with a sliver of hope he can still be stopped.

“I still think it’s a very realistic chance that nobody’s going to have a majority of the delegates,” said Henry Barbour, a senior Republican National Committee member who worked on Marco Rubio’s delegate strategy until the Florida senator exited the race Tuesday.

Barbour said Trump “doesn’t deserve to be president,” but also said he could ultimately support the billionaire if he “can convince me that he’s presidential material.”

Trump cautioned that his supporters would revolt if he falls just short in the delegate count and loses in a rules fight.

“If you just disenfranchise these people, I think you would have problems like you’ve never seen before,” Trump said on CNN’s “New Day.”

Despite the deep concerns about Trump within the Republican Party, there was little tangible action Wednesday that indicated a way to stop the real-estate mogul’s march toward the general election.

There was no rush among party leaders or donors to coalesce around Ted Cruz, the only candidate in the race with even a long-shot chance of overtaking Trump in the delegate count. A small group of conservatives moved forward with plans to meet today to discuss the prospect of rallying behind a third-party option, but no candidate had been identified to lead that effort.

Former House Speaker John Boehner floated his successor, Paul Ryan, as the nominee in the event of a convention fight. But Ryan quickly took himself out of the mix, saying through a spokeswoman that he would “not accept a nomination and believes our nominee should be someone who ran this year.”

Meanwhile, Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton set her sights on a November showdown with Trump. Her sweep of Tuesday’s five primary contests – including a slim lead in yet-to-be-called Missouri – was a harsh blow to rival Bernie Sanders, giving Clinton what her campaign manager described as an “insurmountable lead” in the delegate count.